Professor Takashi Shogimen

Contact Details

Academic Qualifications

Research Interests

Takashi Shogimen is a historian of political thought. His research revolves around three pillars: 1. The history of late medieval and early modern European political thought, 2. The history of modern Japanese political thought, and 3. Comparative history of political thought.

In the field of late medieval and early modern European political thought, his 2007 book in English offered a comprehensive reappraisal of the political thought of William of Ockham (c.1285-1347), a Franciscan theologian and philosopher. His 2013 book in Japanese, which demonstrated the emergence of distinctively European political thinking at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, won the 2013 Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities, one of the most prestigious prizes for humanities researchers and social scientists in Japan. Takashi is currently exploring the history of conceptions of heresy in late medieval and early modern ecclesiology and political thought.

In modern Japanese intellectual history, Takashi has published on the life and thought of Yanaihara Tadao (1893-1961), a prominent economist and Christian thinker. His 2014 book (in Japanese) on the ‘Yanaihara Incident’, the de facto expulsion of Yanaihara from the Imperial University of Tokyo where he was a professor due to his anti-militarist extramural speech, has been reviewed favourably in 20 outlets including four national newspapers in Japan. Currently Takashi is working on a monograph on the history of Japanese patriotism.

Comparative studies in the history of political thought are an emerging field of research as both intellectual history and political theory are increasingly globalised. Takashi has been developing a new approach to comparative study of political thought by deploying a cognitive theory of metaphor. He is currently writing a monograph on the comparative history of the metaphorical discourse of the body politic in Western Europe and East Asia.

Before joining the History Department at Otago, Takashi was Research Fellow at Clare Hall in the University of Cambridge and the Research Assistant for the British Academy’s Medieval Texts Editorial Committee. In May 2005, he was Visiting Professor at the Department of History in the University of Helsinki, Finland and, in late 2009, he was Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science in Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. Takashi was awarded the Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand twice in 2006-2007 and 2008-2010. Takashi is currently a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Research Affiliate of the Centre for the History of European Discourses in the University of Queensland.

Courses Taught

Editorial Responsibilities

Takashi is currently on the editorial board/committee of the Journal of Religious History and Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and on the editorial advisory board of Nihon Kenkyu, a journal of Japanese Studies published by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto.

Chapter in Book - Research

Shogimen, T. (2017). William of Ockham's ecclesiology and political thought. In M.
J. P. Robson (Ed.), The English province of the Franciscans (1224-c.1350).
(pp. 335-353). Leinden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi:
10.1163/9789004331624_017

Shogimen, T. (2015). John of Paris and the idea of peace in the late thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries. In C. Jones (Ed.), John of Paris: Beyond royal and
papal power. (pp. 239-261). Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.

Shogimen, T. (2015). William of Ockham on ecclesiastical censorship. In G. Kemp (Ed.),
Censorship moments: Reading texts in the history of censorship and freedom of
expression. (pp. 39-46). London: Bloomsbury.

Shogimen, T. (2008). William of Ockham and the idea of heresy in medieval Europe.
In S. Sumi & S. Chiba (Eds.), The crossroad of political theory and intellectual
history in Europe [In Japanese]. (pp. 89-110). Tokyo, Japan: Keio University
Press.